Have you been climbing the right mountain? Have you ended up on a dead end street?

 “You are not your cluster of memorized ideas about yourself. Awareness of this dissolves both the cluster and the belief that others can control you. If you have a self-image of being a desirable person, others can control you by flattering it, but can they control if you have no such image?”―Vernon Howard

Vernon says that often the decent thing to do is to just leave people alone.

A teacher once asked Vernon Howard “How can I use these principles in my job as a teacher to help the children?” He said with great emphasis “You be an example of rightness to those children!”

"What is your life all about? Have you ever paused long enough in the mad rush of your money-making of trying to get what you call good things for yourself, have you ever slowed down long enough to ask yourself a simple question, what is my life all about. When is the last time you’ve done that? Long time ago, right?

We’re going to examine your life and the first thing I want you to understand and understand quite clearly, that your life is not your happenings. Now you think it is. You say 'I suffered that loss', I lost my best friend, I lost my spouse, I lost by girl-friend,' whatever. You say you lost something, that means that you think that you are somehow connected with this event. Not really, you just think so.

Your life therefore is not your happenings, it is not what happens to you. When you understand this, when you are able to separate your life, find your true life, separate it from what happens to you, now you know what life is all about, you know what you are all about and you are free from the world."

I felt a HUGE love for God. For reality, reality, and for what we have now!!!

For the last 5 years I have investigated many thoughts about rockets, but I saw that it was only the thoughts that were causing damage and not the rockets!!! So what does it matter if it’s Hurricane Sandy or rockets “Red Alert”? Everything is what is in the moment!!! (this is the role of reality) and love is what’s left after I question the stressful thoughts.

The Byron Katie Newsletter

NOVEMBER 2012

Read: Red Alert

Excerpt from someone who lives in the western Negev in Israel, what you hear in the media as a “near Gaza “ Road (4 km and 4 km from Rafah to Egypt)

The difference between presentation and persuasion.

There were two great orators of antiquity. One was Cicero, and the other Demosthenes.

Plutarch drew attention in his Life of Demosthenes to the strong similarities between the personalities and careers of Demosthenes and Marcus Tullius Cicero:

The divine power seems originally to have designed Demosthenes and Cicero upon the same plan, giving them many similarities in their natural characters, as their passion for distinction and their love of liberty in civil life, and their want of courage in dangers and war, and at the same time also to have added many accidental resemblances. I think there can hardly be found two other orators, who, from small and obscure beginnings, became so great and mighty; who both contested with kings and tyrants; both lost their daughters, were driven out of their country, and returned with honor; who, flying from thence again, were both seized upon by their enemies, and at last ended their lives with the liberty of their countrymen.

Beware of The Rhetoric of New Age Sophists.

Sophism in the modern definition is a specious (Seemingly well-reasoned or factual, but actually fallacious or insincere; strongly held but false) argument used for deceiving someone. In ancient Greece, sophists were a category of teachers who specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric for the purpose of teaching arete—excellence, or virtue—predominantly to young statesmen and nobility.

A Sophist was a specific kind of teacher in both Ancient Greece and in the Roman Empire. Many sophists specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric, though other sophists taught subjects such as music, athletics, and mathematics. In general, they claimed to teach arete ("excellence" or "virtue," applied to various subject areas), predominantly to young statesmen and nobility. The early sophists' practice of charging money for education and providing wisdom only to those who could pay led to the condemnations made by Socrates, through Plato in his Dialogues, as well as Xenophon's Memorabilia. Through works such as these, Sophists were portrayed as "specious" or "deceptive", hence the modern meaning of the term. Despite these criticisms, however, many sophists flourished in later periods, especially during the era of Roman history known as the Second Sophistic.
In the second half of the 5th century BC, particularly at Athens, "sophist" came to denote a class of mostly itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in various subjects, speculated about the nature of language and culture and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others: "Sophists did, however, have one important thing in common: whatever else they did or did not claim to know, they characteristically had a great understanding of what words would entertain or impress or persuade an audience."

THE MEDIUM FOR INFLUENCING THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

The Third Step toward Riches

Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill [1938]

Napoleon Hill said, "Faith is a state of mind which may be induced, or created, by affirmation or repeated instructions to the subconscious mind through the principle of auto-suggestion."

We are what we think, and we can imprint any thought on our subconscious mind through REPETITION.

Hill reiterated the importance of REPEATING our affirmations at least twice a day (preferably upon awakening and again before sleeping).

With this repetition, we should also be VISUALIZING ourselves already in possession of what we desire, and FEELING ourselves having already accomplished our goal. 

Hill said, "Carry out these instructions as though you were a child. Inject into your efforts something of the faith of a child."

Design a life: Ask, Believing you have already received.

Mind Wanderings

Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D. discusses how we are far too tolerant of our projections (mind wanderings), believing that what we are projecting is real, i.e., our guilt. We also believe that what we are projecting onto is also real, namely the sinful world that hurts us.

fUNDAMENTALS

WITH so vast a subject, it is indeed a difficult task to summarize in a few hundred words what I consider the – most basic ideas on which those who seek a true understanding of metaphysics should now concentrate. I shall do what I can in the shape of three fundamentals. These fundamentals are: Self-Observation, Definition of Aim, and Detachment.

The purpose of true metaphysics is to bring about a rebirth or radical psychological change in the individual. Such a change cannot take place until the individual first discovers the self that he would change. This discovery can be made only through an uncritical observation of his reactions to life. The sum total of these reactions defines the individual's state of consciousness, and it is the individual's state of consciousness that attracts the situations and circumstances of his life.

So the starting point of true metaphysics, on its practical side, is self-observation in order to discover one's reactions to life, reactions which form one's secret self – the cause of the phenomena of life.

With Emerson, I accept the fact that “Man surrounds himself with the true image of himself . . . what we are, that only can we see."